scholarly journals The provenance of what is proven: exploring (mock) jury deliberation in Scottish rape trials

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES CHALMERS ◽  
FIONA LEVERICK ◽  
VANESSA E. MUNRO
Keyword(s):  
Jury Deliberation ◽  
Mock Jury ◽  
Rape Trials

Breaking boundaries? Sexual consent in the jury room

Legal Studies ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 303-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Finch ◽  
Vanessa E Munro
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Consent ◽  
Future Application ◽  
Sexual Offences ◽  
Limited Effect ◽  
Jury Deliberation ◽  
Jury Deliberations ◽  
Legal Outcomes ◽  
Mock Jury ◽  
Rape Trial ◽  
Sexual Offences Act 2003

By introducing legal tests centring upon concepts of freedom, capacity and reasonableness, the Sexual Offences Act 2003 reflects a deliberate legislative attempt both to provide a clearer structure for jury deliberation on sexual consent and to hold defendants to a higher level of accountability in relation to their belief in its existence. While these developments are well intentioned, it is argued that they may ultimately prove to be of limited effect. More specifically, it is suggested that there is an inherent complexity in the concepts of freedom, capacity and reasonableness, at least in the largely undefined form in which they have been introduced, such that the Act may, in practice, simply result in the proliferation of a new set of malleable legal tests and unpredictable legal outcomes.Drawing on a series of mock jury deliberations undertaken by the authors in which participants were asked, having observed a short rape trial reconstruction, to apply the tests set out in the Sexual Offences Act 2003 in order to reach a verdict, this paper examines the ways in which the concepts of freedom, capacity and reasonableness were interpreted. Bearing in mind the inevitable constraints of the mock jury methodology (in particular its verisimilitude to real juries), this paper suggests that there may, nonetheless, be some valuable lessons to be gleaned from these deliberations about the future application of the law in actual rape cases.

scholarly journals Storytelling Rituals in Jury Deliberations

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (9(5)) ◽  
pp. 747-770 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meredith Rossner
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expression ◽  
Video Recording ◽  
Criminal Trial ◽  
Actual Process ◽  
Jury Deliberation ◽  
Jury Deliberations ◽  
Mock Jury

Research on jury deliberation tends to focus on deliberative outcomes, such as verdict decisions. Less attention is paid to the actual process of deliberation. This paper analyzes a video recording of a mock jury deliberation in a simulated criminal trial, focusing on facial expression, gesture, and discourse. Drawing on ethnomethodology and micro-sociological theories of ritual, I examine how jurors make sense of the evidence presented to them and how they work together to collectively produce a coherent narrative of events. I argue that a focus on the ritual dynamics of the deliberation help to understand how such a co-production can occur. La investigación sobre la deliberación del jurado tiende a centrarse en los resultados de esa deliberación, como pueden ser los veredictos. Menos atención genera el proceso mismo de deliberación. Este artículo analiza una grabación de vídeo de la deliberación de un jurado en un simulacro de juicio penal, y se fija especialmente en las expresiones faciales, los gestos y los discursos. Basándome en la etnometodología y en teorías de ritual microsociológicas, examino la forma en que los jurados buscan el sentido de las pruebas que se les presentan y la forma en que trabajan juntos para producir una narración coherente de los hechos. Argumento que poner el énfasis en las dinámicas rituales de la deliberación ayuda a entender cómo se realiza esa producción colectiva.

Toward Understanding When Deliberations in Mock Jury Studies Are Necessary

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
John G. McCabe ◽  
Justin C. Mary ◽  
Daniel Krauss
Keyword(s):  
Mock Jury

scholarly journals “Blaming The Victim” Under Memory Load

2003 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen D. Goldinger ◽  
Heather M. Kleider ◽  
Tamiko Azuma ◽  
Denise R. Beike
Keyword(s):  
Memory Load ◽  
Working Memory Capacity ◽  
Counterfactual Thinking ◽  
Memory Capacity ◽  
Adaptive Value ◽  
Spontaneous Behavior ◽  
Mock Jury ◽  
Systematic Biases ◽  
Study Participants ◽  
Jury Decisions

When presented with negative outcomes, people often engage in counterfactual thinking, imagining various ways that events might have been different. This appears to be a spontaneous behavior, with considerable adaptive value. Nevertheless, counterfactual thinking may also engender systematic biases in various judgment tasks, such as allocating blame for a mishap, or deciding on the appropriate compensation to a victim. Thus, counterfactuals sometimes require thought suppression or discounting, potentially resource-demanding tasks. In this study, participants made mock-jury decisions about control and counterfactual versions of simple stories. The judgments of two groups of participants, differing in their respective levels of working memory capacity, were compared. In addition, all participants held memory loads during various stages of the primary task. Lower-span individuals were especially susceptible to bias associated with the counterfactual manipulation, but only when holding memory loads during judgment. The results suggest that counterfactual thoughts arise automatically, and may later require effortful, capacity-demanding suppression.

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